beIN SPORTS out and ESPN/BAMTech in for Championship TV rights

EXCLUSIVE: In a stunning turn of events, BAMTech has acquired the US rights to the English Championship and EFL Cup, and has reached a separate agreement with ESPN to have the live and on-demand matches shown by the Worldwide Leader of Sports.

beIN SPORTS will not broadcast the 2017/18 Championship season, and has subsequently removed all of the opening EFL Championship weekend matches from their schedule.

According to an ESPN spokesperson, “Beginning August 4, as part of a separate agreement ESPN reached with BAMTech, ESPN will have live and replay coverage of weekly matches from the EFL. Currently, the plan is for the matches to be carried on ESPN3.”

The confusion arose last week when beIN SPORTS confirmed they were planning on broadcasting the opening weekend of the Championship across both television and their beIN SPORTS Connect streaming platform. But according to beIN SPORTS today, they were instructed to remove the EFL games from all of their schedules. Nevertheless, as of press time, beIN SPORTS’ own website still has Championship listings on their TV guide for this upcoming weekend, which undoubtedly will be updated shortly.

BAMTech is a streaming technology provider that is part owned by MLB, Disney (parent company of ESPN) and the NHL. The technology provider was recently in the news when it was revealed that they bid on the rights for the UEFA Champions League but were beaten by Turner Sports.

An added complexity for the 2017/18 season is that the vast majority of clubs have signed up on a club-by-club basis to offer legal streams of every home and away league game to viewers around the world (outside of the United Kingdom and Ireland). The streaming service, named iFollow, will feature all of the league games for each participating club except for those games that are streamed by ESPN3 in the United States.

To navigate through all of the changes, we recommend that you visit our Championship TV/streaming schedule for viewers in the USA, which will be updated weekly throughout the season with all of the links and TV details to view the matches.

As an example, a Nottingham Forest supporter can sign up for a season pass to iFollow Forest for $140 for the entire season, which will allow him or her to stream every home and away league match during the season. Note, however, that if games are available via ESPN3, they will be blacked out from iFollow, so you’ll need to ensure you have a subscription to a package that includes iFollow and ESPN3 for the Forest games that are shown there.

About The Author

Publisher of World Soccer Talk, Christopher Harris founded the site in 2005. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian and several other publications. Plus he has made appearances on NPR, BBC World, CBC, BBC Five Live, talkSPORT and beIN SPORT.
Harris, who was born and raised in Wales, has lived in Florida since 1984, and supported Swansea City since 1979. Last but not least, he got engaged during half-time of a MLS game.

75 Comments

KirbyAugust 2, 2017

This is incredibly confusing, especially being a QPR fan… Please keep us posted Gaffer

ESPN and BamTech have been talking about an over the top offering for quite some time. It would offer sports not available on linear tv as to not undercut ESPN. This sounds like something primed to be on the new service for a monthly fee, not on ESPN3 but time will tell.

According to an ESPN spokesperson, “Beginning August 4, as part of a separate agreement ESPN reached with BAMTech, ESPN will have live and replay coverage of weekly matches from the EFL. Currently, the plan is for the matches to be carried on ESPN3.

Wow I would love to know the back story of what is going on Christopher. I think this is a plus as ESPN3 is way way more reliable than BeIN Sports Connect. I watched the Fulham vs West Ham preseason game on there with no interruptions. No announcers either which was weird but good feed.

I will have you know good sir, that the ‘junky second division football’ as you so graciously put it, is one of the most competitive leagues and the fourth most watched league in the world. In fact, there are more traditional historic English ‘big clubs’ in the Championship than the Premier League these days.

For example, Leeds United (3x first division winners including in the last season before it was re-named the Premier League) and rightful 1975 European Cup winner), Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United, Middlesbrough, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Sunderland, Derby County, Wolves, Norwich, Blackburn (won the Premier League in 1995 and got relegated to the third division last season) and Preston North End (first ‘big club’ in the history of ‘soccer’) are all currently stuck in the division.

All of those clubs listed, especially the likes of Leeds, Wednesday, Forest and Preston are all bigger than current Premier League clubs such as Huddersfield (who are sure to be relegated), Swansea, Brighton, Burnley, Bournemouth, Stoke, West Brom, Watford, Southampton, Crystal Palace and even Manchester City (before the oil barrens took over).

As well as this, I would encourage any American ‘soccer’ fan to watch the Championship as it is very different from Premier League football, more traditional with a larger physical aspect to the game. This is the reason many promoted clubs struggle to do well in the Premier League. It is also largely untarnished by the excessive spending that is found in the Premier League, with the football economy bound to collapse as a result of it at some point.

Therefore, if you want to watch a more authentic and real version of the game, with more historic clubs and loyal fans (look at the difference in fan bases between fierce rivals Leeds United and Manchester Untied as a prime example. Leeds go from Champions League semi finalists to third division football in the space of a few seasons and still attract vast numbers of fans and sell out away allocations in minutes. Man U on the other hand, finish 6th a couple times and their home fans are now mainly tourists and many of their glory supporting fans have switched allegiance to Man City, Chelsea or even Leicester (only for the season they won the Premier League that is)) then the Championship is perfect viewing.

Sorry for the essay, but it’s imperative that brand awareness of the Championship is raised in the US of A.

I think it is BeIn that should be nervous. Cord-cutting and OTT are rapidly growing while cable/satellite is shrinking. On top of that, they are losing out to a platform that has other popular offerings, which makes it more compelling to the average American sports consumer. Finally, platform for streaming is inferior to BAMTech, and on top of that, ESPN will likely be a winner when it comes to the sea change of the end of net neutrality.

In some respects, beIN has been ahead of the curve when it comes to cord-cutters. They have made themselves available on FuboTV, Sling, Playstation VUE (no longer), Roku Apps, etc. fairly early on. I have heard from more people deciding on a service based on if they have beINSport than any other channel (this, of course, is due to LaLiga alone and I DO live in a soccer-centric world).

If anything dooms beINSport it will be the incessant technical difficulties and lack of On-Demand features on their CONNECT service. The truth is, as long as they can keep La Liga, they will survive in the US. But I am a bit dismayed by the lack attention the technological side of CONNECT is getting. They need to revamp it. There is nothing wrong with “copying” a successful service already in place and that service is called ESPNWatch.

Won’t be surprised if ESPN Deportes picks up the games and shows them on TV since the network has no soccer on the weekends except for some Liga MX and MLS matches. If a Mexican goes to a English Championship (which I highly doubt) they no doubt will pass the games involving them. Just this week they ended up showing a West Ham friendly that ESPN had the rights to just because of Chichairto, the match was added to their agenda in the last minute. Also expect them to show all West Ham’s EFL Cup matches as well.

Wtf is this…. Lose EPL to optus, okay can live with that if I have championship to watch on Foxtel and now this…, Australia is only left with 1 EPL game a week to watch on free to air tv if you refuse to give in to Optus.

I’m assuming this deal with ESPN3 will include the promotion playoffs at the end of the season, can you confirm this is correct?

This is a good move, more people in the U.S. have access to ESPN3 than they do to beIN. beIN is available on my cable system at a more expensive rate that I’m not willing to pay. ESPN3 is available to me and to anyone with a basic cable subscription that includes ESPN.

Great news, at least for me. I have ESPN already and don’t have BeIN so that will save me some money. Not so good for anyone that may have just subscribed to BeIN so they could watch EFL games. I do think this could have been handled better and the deal sorted out as the previous season ended so that viewers (these are after all the people that pay the networks) could have arranged their viewing channels accordingly.

I wish NBC would have paid for the rights to the Championship and offered that league as part of the Premier League Pass package. They could have shown all the Championship matches on NBC Sports Gold and then had the playoffs and Final on NBC or NBCSN. I would have paid more than $50 for that as well as the 130 PL matches being offered. Anyone know when they will announce how/when we can buy this package and what shows will be included?

As a life long Barnsley fan ( I was born there) If it’s true, that’s great news. I have espn via my Xbox and can access from work too. Its about time we had more proper football to watch over here in the states. It also saves me money too after paying for comcast to show premiership games.

Correct me if I am wrong but ESPN3 is all streaming, and I won’t actually be able to watch any of this on my TV as I was previously able to via BeInSports, I don’t see this as an upgrade in any way at all.

Correct but you can always cast your ESPN3 broadcast from your laptop, smartphone or tablet to your TV. Or, better yet, watch ESPN3 via the app on an Apple TV, Roku or Amazon Fire to watch it on your TV.

Yeah, I think this is a way better scenario. The BeINConnect app can be buggy as hell at times. But ESPN3 via chromecast/Roku/apple tv works great. Also, no ones mentioned the fact that with Championship matches on ESPN3, you can replay whenever you want. So you potentially have a whole Saturday of English football- watch the Premier League live on NBC then catch up on Championship on ESPN3 replays.
Question is, are the same number of EFL matches to be shown on ESPN3 as were to be shown on BeIN Sports?

If you go into the Watch ESPN app and select ESPN FC along the top row, it takes you to a listing of live games but there is also a Replay tab that lists previously aired games from the past 5 or 6 days so you have the option to watch a replay for several days.

Sling users can sign into the watchESPN app using their Sling credentials, which allows replay watching. Just watched this morning’s Fulham v. Norwich match. Absolutely loving the 60fps. This makes such a difference. No nasty comet trail when the ball is played long.

Was great to watch it on Roku beautiful color. . Jon Champion brilliant commentor . Wish they had a bit of introduction about the league and proper analyzes of it . A highlight show on Monday would be helpful . 2 games tomorrow & 1 on Sunday not bad for the first few days

I’m so disappointed to hear this but knew something was up when I didn’t see any games on bein listed on the livesoccertv app. Whoever said bein was overconfident of retaining the rights is correct. Espn pulled off a real coup here. However, they didn’t put up the money to retain the EPL rights a few years ago but it would be amazing if these games were shown on espn or espn2. For now, looks like I’ll be watching more of Ligue 1 and La Liga after EPL matches.

Any idea if EFL coverage will apply to Australia? There was no airing of the Sunderland v Derby game and nothing showing up in the TV guide for this weekend. Very disappointing for BeIN sports to have lost the rights.

Alagbe Adeola R. SEPTEMBER 21, 2017
Well done ESPN.
How can we get to view ESPN3 in Nigeria (Africa)
Where can make payment for subscription& get ur decoder.
We can’t watch EFL Cup (carabao cup) now.
DSTV do not have the right to air the matches this season 17/18
Thank you.

In Australia, we are all sick and bloody tired of being screwed! No EFL due to Bein losing the rights, no EPL due to Foxtel losing the rights, we don’t get ESPN 3, what are we left with? 1 bloody game a week on free to air. I’m fed up with it, what a dogs breakfast! We have zero subscription alternatives, even the stream from the club service is poor! Why can’t we get ESPN3 in Australia?

The EFL have signed a new TV deal with Sky Sports which will begin 2019/20. Included in this new deal is live broadcast of a number of midweek games, which could mean these live games being broadcast in the US

Well done ESPN.
How can we get to view ESPN3 in Nigeria.?
Where can make payment for subscription& get ur decoder.
We can’t watch EFL Cup (carabao cup) now.
DSTV do not have the right to air the matches this season 17/18
Thanks